One of the hardships that comes with walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death is what you are expected to carry out. We tend to think that in that valley there grows a very special sort of tree, a wisdom, or insight tree. We think that this rarest of trees is perpetually heavy laden with low hanging, choice, juicy morsels of brilliance. You’re supposed to bring these precious nuggets out the other side to share with your friends. Understandably, though they should know better, some who trek this valley think they’ve found this precious fruit. The quiet whispers of death on the prowl beget therefore footprints-in-the-sand poems and too often, whole therapeutic books of lessons learned.
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I seek to be a professional persuader. Though I am much less pushy in my more private life, my profession is to profess my confession. Sometimes I am given a classroom of students. Sometimes I am given a sanctuary of sheep. I seek to persuade readers of books, or magazines, and of the internet. My desire, of course, is to help. My prayer is that my confession matches one for one with the fullness of the Word of God. His wisdom, not my own folly is what we all need. And so here I am sending my thoughts your way.
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God is all and only wisdom, the very font of all truth. The Bible is His Word, and is true in all that it teaches, as well as sufficient to guide us into every good work. His Word is perspicuous, that is clear, and understandable. Not all of the Bible, however, is as clear as all the rest. These ground rules inform us, broadly speaking, that the Bible tells us everything we need to know, but that it might not all be right out there in the open. He has not only not left us orphans, He has not left us blind. That said, here are five things that are less clear in the Bible than I might, in the abstract, expect them to be.
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The Bible teaches, from Genesis 3 onward, the antithesis. Antithesis is a rather fancy theological term that simply affirms that the people of God live their lives in the context of the battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. While we are called to love our enemies, we are called to recognize them as enemies. Though the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, we are at war. We are called to be set apart, distinct, separate from the world around us.
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Media, as a general rule, is directed more toward our emotions than our minds. As Neil Postman argued so eloquently in his delightful book Amusing Ourselves to Death, a word based culture tends to be more reasoned, more thoughtful, whereas an image based culture tends to be more emotive, more reactionary. We are a sensate culture accustomed and comfortable with experiencing emotions lightly and at the behest of others.
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One of the great dangers of our industrialized view of education, wherein we view our children as raw material that are moved along a conveyer belt until they come out the other side educated widgets, is that it bifurcates our lives. We are, in this view, students for a time, until we are students no more.
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If God is sovereign, how do we determine the significant from the insignificant? I often hear the layman exclaim how God's hand was in this or that, but they seem somewhat selective in their testimonies. If something good happens, God is often referenced. When something bad happens there is also the desire to find God in the matter. But what about the seemingly insignificant things? What about the rolling stone? Are we to see God's hand in absolutely everything, if His hand is in fact in absolutely everything?
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It’s a big world out there, full of all manner of sin. In these United States sodomites parade their perversion down Main Street. In Canada to denounce sodomy as perversion is to invite prosecution by the state. In parts of Europe more couples cohabit than marry. In Iraq and East Timor militant Muslims blow up churches in service to Allah. Sin abounds out there.
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